


Under the Apple Orchards

by chocorango



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Not Canon Compliant, Quirin go get ur justice, a What If if there were no Saporian takeover, bc that's what Corona reminds me of, could b a wee bit graphic, it's also Midsommar inspired, listen, ok um, so just know, this is angst, viva la revolucion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24818173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocorango/pseuds/chocorango
Summary: Quirin is freed from his amber, but Varian refuses to see or talk to him.
Relationships: Quirin & Rapunzel (Disney), Quirin & Varian (Disney), Rapunzel & Varian (Disney)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	Under the Apple Orchards

And in front of him, it is all gold.

Gold and glittery and cheerful and sweet.

Varian opens his eyes, and sees all their faces, all beaming with pride and happiness, all beaming as the sun shines overhead, its heat making the people fan their faces with glee.

An hour, maybe two, and this feeling would pass. All bad things did, all bad things would.

But it does not pass, and he wonders.

The day gets hotter, and the sun is no longer gentle. As he observes, the people all retreat, all fall in line with exhaustion, all hide in their houses. The air is so heavy, and the people cannot breathe.

The apple orchards dot the kingdom, wilting and dying, the sun eating their leaves, drying their fruits, killing their crops, but the people have done nothing wrong.

It is just the heat.

it is just the sun.

it is just the way of the world.

……who is he to defy that?

❂ ❂ ❂

When Quirin is freed, gasping for air, his son is nowhere to be found.

“Varian…where…where is he?” Quirin asks the golden haired princess, as she gathers her hair, as her friends leave the house, their work done.

The princess stops, her brows pulled down, as if she knows but cannot tell, and says _it’s not a good_ _idea._ Varian didn’t want to be there for Quirin’s release. He does not want to speak or see Quirin. He’s overwhelmed. He’s been through a lot. A lot has happened. Not now. Not now. 

And so Quirin, worriedly, waits for his son to come back. The princess had assured him his son would return eventually, but the house is dusty, silent, dark, and on a whim he cleans the wooden floors, scrubs the cobwebs from the shelves, until his knees and hands sting and until he can no longer do anything but pace.

_Where was his boy?_ Quirin hadn’t seen him for so long, hadn’t seen his son’s eyes for so long, eyes so blue he’d wonder why the skies above were so dull. He didn’t understand what had gone so wrong for his own boy to refuse to see him, he feared that maybe he did understand why Varian would refuse to see him.

_Have I scared him away?_

The empty house is big and threatening, and Quirin can hear himself breathing. He wakes up before dawn, abruptly, his eyes searching. He swears he heard the muffled sounds of his son, he is certain Varian has returned to the house, his feet quick on the floorboards, cursing as another one of his solutions skidded on the floor. 

But if Varian had returned, he hadn't come to visit him. The lab is overturned, vials and shattered glass every where, but Quirin remains alone. 

It is just the way of things, Quirin thinks, just the way things are. 

But the house is empty and he's worried, still.

_It is not how things should be_. 

❂ ❂ ❂

He is tired when he reaches the palace. The gold and white castle is unnaturally bright against his shabby clothes, dirtied by the ash and dust outside the palace, and he feels uncomfortable, his frame too awkward, his hands too gnarled and rough to ever grace the castle’s marble floors. 

“I came here to see my son,” Quirin states, bowing deeply, as the guards look up to the King and Queen.

“He will not see you,” the King says, gently, as if all questions have been answered, but Quirin does not let his voice waver.

“Why?” he asks, and the King sighs, and suddenly Quirin is frozen, the king farther and farther away, as he listens to how his son became a criminal. As he listens to the stories, as he listens to how his son betrayed the crown, held the Queen herself hostage and threatened the King, he cannot help but feel a little strange. A piece is missing, surely, a puzzle piece that he cannot grasp, but who...who is he to defy the King’s word?

His son had betrayed the kingdom. Committed treason. Had he known his son, had he raised him wrong after all? 

“He’s probably ran away,” the King finishes his explanation, his back taunt against his throne, his voice steady, “I... suspect he does not want to face you.” 

Quirin is helpless, his reflection on the marble floor staring back at him, unflinching, hesitant.

“Who took care of Varian when I was gone, Your Majesty?” he finds himself asking, “Maybe…maybe they’d know where he went?”

The King’s eyes darken.

“He was taken care of,” he answers, shortly, and just like that, the throne doors are tightly shut, and Quirin's audience with the King is over.

❂ ❂ ❂

The lower level dungeons are dark, the walls quiet and still, and Quirin paces, his brows pulled together. There are no guards down there, for there are scarce any prisoners, and Quirin breathes a sigh of relief as he slowly goes down the dungeon's carved stairs and, scouring the place, sees not a soul. 

“Hello?” he tries, and his voice is low, powerful, and yet the dungeons swallow it up, their walls closing in.

His throat is dry.

He had heard that his son too, had been in one of these cells, cooped up with a dangerous Saporian. The Saporian-Andrew, the king had said, his eyes full of remorse- remained locked away, and Varian had broken out- but he had still been in these cells once.

His beautiful boy, his eyes lighting up the world, had been in these cells, and broken out of them. 

_Or the King was lying about Varian breaking out of these cells._

Quirin stands still. 

He is a respectable man, the leader of a town. He had never been one to make conspiracies, to blame all the world but him about his own mistakes. The King...why would he lie? He shouldn't be down here. His son had escaped, had chosen to kidnap and threaten and be what he is. Perhaps, Qurin thinks, he'd been too thick to notice. Some kids turn out like that, they chose their path, and maybe Quirin has failed Varian, and that's just how it is.

It is just the way of the world, Quirin thinks, just how it-

“It's you. Isn't it?”

The voice is raspy, weak with disuse and way too low to be his son’s, but Quirin turns, startled.

It is a prisoner in a cell, a lone man, and Quirin first sees the necklace on his chest, a Saporian symbol, dull in the darkness of the cell.

“You’re that brat’s father, aren’t you?”

The ceiling drips, and the prisoner scoffs.

“They won’t tell you where he is, old man. Just let it go.”

Quirin tenses. He should just turn back, he thinks, just turn back and accept the way things are. And yet-

“What...What do you mean?” Quirin whispers, harshly. It is treason, what he is doing, it is surely worth a sentence, but he cannot help but think, perhaps, that the Saporian criminal in front of him is the only one who would give him any answer. He cannot help but feel that something is wrong. “Do you know where he is?” He pauses, and there is a long, seething silence.

Andrew was the one shoved in a cell with his son, Quirin knows. And as much as he does not trust the man in front of him, this tall, wiry man with matted hair, he wonders if Varian had had any other comfort in that cell.

Criminal or not, Quirin hadn't seen this son of his for so very long, and he hates how he stands now, a stranger to his own son, asking a criminal for Varian's whereabouts as if the criminal knew. 

What was he doing?

“Please, just, if you know where Varian is- just tell me."

Silence, again, and Andrew’s eyes are blank, but they dart to either side of the cell bars, searching, Quirin supposes, for any trace of a guard.

“Don’t get me involved with this,” Andrew sneers, but Quirin can still see him falter, weaken, “He will not see you.”

“Please,” Quirin’s voice sounds fiercely desperate to him suddenly, but he misses his son, misses his laugh, misses these big blue eyes that were so wide and curious when he was born-

Andrew's hands reach for the bars of the cell, and Quirin jerks back. 

“You should go now,” Andrew’s voice is firmer now, almost angry, “I don’t want anything to do with that little boy of yours.”

Quirin does not leave.

Andrew’s face sours.

“They’ll burn me alive too if you don’t leave, old man,” his mocking tone, somehow, falls flat.

There is silence, again, but it soon ends. 

“Just like they did your son.”

-

_Where has his son gone? Surely he'd find him soon._

_**Where are you?** Quirin asks, and he know he's dreaming and it's not true, for the sun is too weak in the sky and there is no dancing and music from in the kingdom._

_And his son stares at him, and he's with the other children, and it's funny, isn't it, because Quirin hadn't seen these children in a long time. Mayhaps decades. Mayhaps years or months, when they disappeared at daylight from their homes and from the streets, in the full glare of the sun and all the people, but does it matter? His son is happy, his smile so pure, and he smiles as his hand, black as coal, crumbles slowly to the grass._

**_we're here_ **

_the sun is very weak, but still the children gather 'neath the apple trees._

**_we're where we shouldn't be, aren't we?_ **

-

Quirin wakes up, his back overrun by beads of sweat. 

It is morning, and the people mourn the loss of the princess' best friend, for the girl had gotten jealous of the princess. 

"She'll come around," the people comfort the princess, "It's just the way things are," they say, and the music starts at dawn, another celebration. 

Quirin heaves, his frame bent over the wooden floorboards. He wonders if his boy had struggled, if the fire was higher than usual that day, because his boy was brighter than the sun itself. He wonders why he can still hear the children in his dream, he wonders why no one else seems to hear them. 

He wonders if the music will ever stop.

❂ ❂ ❂

They have buried his son under the apple orchards, they have buried Varian underneath the apple trees, but Quirin knows, at least, that his son is not alone.

He is sure there are more children under the shade, more that do not see the sun and never will, more children that feed the worms and the ground, more than anyone will ever know. The King has planted them there, and the people tend to them like a royal garden, and Varian was just another unwanted weed in the garden, growing where he shouldn’t have.

He kneels in front of the orchards. The moon is no where to be found, and the ground is damp and soft.

And Quirin wants to see his boy again, as the clouds hang above, as the royals celebrate the return of their beloved princess, or a festival that they have made up, or perhaps nothing at all. The night is loud, people laughing as they feast and dance and sing, and truly, Quirin knows, they will not hear.

The shovel is heavy in his hands, and the people dance and sing. They danced and sang when the King of Corona was crowned, the celebrations piling up, they danced and sang and drank so frequently thereafter, as if the night was always young and as if the world was good and just.

And where are the children? Why, they rest 'neath the shade, for these nights are not for them, and these places ain't for them. And if they return with worms and dirt on their clothes, their skin cold against their parents' cheeks, underground for all to know, then it is just the way of the world,

It is just the way things are 

and not, perhaps, how they should be. 

And that is why the people dance and sing, as the sun rises ever higher. 

And that is why Quirin digs.

**Author's Note:**

> :) yeet the monarchy


End file.
